US warfighters are unique, only Israel remotely comparable: Takor

Australian provider of mobile geospatial products Takor Group has identified the US military approach to innovation and uptake of new capabilities as unique, only comparable to the Israeli Defence stance.

The firm’s managing director Amir Farhand – who has been engaged in a concerted push to expand the business in the US market – told Defence Connect that the response has been encouraging.

"[They were] extremely open [and] extremely innovative, willing to take risks in order to get the best product," he said. "The American war-fighter is probably different to any other warfighter in the world. I think the only other warfighters that I've had experience with which come even close to the innovation level is probably the Israelis – the Israeli Defence Forces– and obviously the crème-de-la-crème, you know, always rises to the top."

"They're willing to test everything and anything to get their guys to be at the forefront of technology," added Farhand, who went on to elaborate on the work the company is now doing in collaboration with the US military.

"The first stage is we're trying to [find out from] the warfighters to understand exactly what the applications [are] that they need; [the] mapping technology out in the field," he said. "The second stage is actually building a tactical wartime fighting response [where] we're going directly for their use out in the field."

Summing up, Farhand predicted that within the next year and a half, Takor Group’s technology would be a part of the US military’s checkbox.

He said the goal was to have them saying, "'Yep, I've got this, I've got that' – either as a redundancy product or … as a legacy product, which they can have. But also as an innovative product, which, for example, their live drone imagery [technology] can go into."